Successful Infiltration

An object smaller than the previously disguised meteors was launched from the swarm, heading straight for the outermost gas giant in the star system inhabited by the Kess.

Halfway to its destination, the object unfolded an umbrella-shaped structure and sprayed minute quantities of ions opposite to its direction of travel.

Ion deceleration propulsion was a method with obvious advantages and disadvantages. Its advantage was high specific impulse, meaning efficient fuel energy utilization; its disadvantage was low thrust per unit time.

It was precisely because of ion propulsion's drawback that the object began decelerating halfway through its journey. According to calculations, sustained deceleration using ion propulsion over the latter half of the trip would reduce the object's speed to within a safe range by the time it reached its destination.

However, the Collectors had chosen ion propulsion for deceleration precisely because of that drawback. Low thrust per unit time also meant low energy release per unit time, giving it excellent concealment against thermal imaging radar.

After all, electromagnetic waves weakened over distance, their energy steadily diminishing. The faint electromagnetic waves released by ion propulsion would be swallowed up by the universe's background electromagnetic radiation before the two civilizations in the star system could detect them.

After approaching the outermost planet, the object altered its course and headed for one of the planet's moons, eventually crashing onto that airless satellite.

They mined material from the moon and transferred it into space, creating disguised meteors of varying sizes, each between ten and twenty kilometers in diameter.

Once their number reached ten thousand, the Collectors activated the ion propulsion systems on the disguised meteors they inhabited. The vast meteor swarm then began heading toward the second orbital planet, Yaoxing, where the Kess lived.

During the disguised meteor shower's journey, the spy individuals inside the